Holi: Festival of joy in an otherwise monotonous material life

Once Sri Krishna went to his mother and said, “Maa, why is my complexion dark and blue while my beloved Radha’s complexion is so clear and beautiful? Radha teases me for my blue complexion.” Upon this, Maa Yashoda said, “O Krishna, in deep love and friendship, colour of skin has no meaning, because love and friendship have a range of colours in them, and moreover, why don’t you go and put some colours on Radha’s face and let her put some colours on your face, so that both of you become the same coloured one? Then nobody will tease you, and then you both will look the same.”

Hearing this, Sri Krishna joyfully went out and coloured his beloved Radha with so many beautiful colours, and Radha too poured all the colours on Sri Krishna. All the beloved Gopi’s (friends and devotees) of Sri Krishna also joined this amazing event. Everyone started pouring colours on each other, and soon they all started to look the same.

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At that moment, all outer differences vanished, and they all experienced a deep sense of oneness with their beloved Krishna.

This was the start of one of the most loved and joyful festivals of colours in Bharat, which we know as Holi. This is the festival of divine love and friendship, of realising our joyful oneness, and of spreading this joy and sense of oneness that we feel in our hearts to the world out there.

When we look around, it feels like we have created a very comfortable life that is materially rich, filled with entertainment media, technology, and everything else that can make our physical life easy and comfortable, but that has not provided us with much joy.

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In fact, in the name of growth and development, we have actually created a very ‘joyless society’. Humans are not happy; there is a sharp rise in all kinds of mental ailments across the world, and people are living materially rich but inwardly lonely lives.

The rise in the number of hospitals, old age homes, orphanages, crime rates, and prisons is proof that we have succeeded in creating an utterly ‘Joyless society’.

In a society where love and friendship are losing their meaning, where purpose is lost, hope is gone, meaningfulness is hard to find, and where even the youth are becoming increasingly joyless, Holi brings some respite.

This joylessness is life-negating; this is not the life that our ancestors wanted us to create. But maybe Sri Krishna knew about this kind of possible future, where humans will start to live in their own self-created misery.

That is why, thousands of years ago, Bhagwan Vishnu ji took an incarnation on earth as Sri Krishna to give us this message and a secret formula through numerous Leela’s (divine playfulness) that life means divine love and friendship, which is equal to joy.

As humans, we experience a range of thoughts and emotions. Every thought and each emotion has the tone of a certain colour matched to it. Some of them are life-negating and dark, like fear, anger, jealousy, and hatred, and some are really life-affirmative and light, like love, friendship, compassion, and appreciation.

The beauty of human incarnation is that we can choose which colour we want to inculcate in our lives. Remember, whichever colour of thoughts and emotions we have, we will be able to give only that colour to people around us.

If we are constantly delving into the life-negating colours within ourselves, then we will be able to share only those colours with others. It is because we can only give what we have.

So, think deeply, feel clearly, and choose mindfully which colours of thoughts and emotions you want to choose and grow in your life.

If we can look at the inner heart of any person, we will see that everybody wants to experience the light and life-nourishing colours of love, friendship, compassion, and appreciation.

We all want these colours from our relatives, but our expectations of them will never be fulfilled unless we start to give them out to the world. Also, we must surround ourselves with people who have developed the capacity to paint the world with such beautiful, life-enriching colours.

Along with this, one of the most effective ways to cultivate these colours in our lives is to start to appreciate the diversity of actual colours in nature. Just look around and see that on a single tree, a variety of shades of green are on its leaves.

Nature continuously shows us abundant diversity and eternal unity amidst this diversity. Let us learn this from nature. Then, let us start to appreciate the light and life-nurturing colours of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours in people around us. The more we appreciate such colours in others, the more we will be able to absorb and cultivate these colours in our own lives too.

Holi is the divine festival of joy. Today on Holi, let us remember this beautiful message of Sri Krishna and colour our lives and the lives of our friends and loved ones with the colours of divine joyfulness. Only then will our lives have some meaning, hope, and, above all, shades of divine love and friendship.

Happy Holi!

The author is a visionary spiritual teacher, leadership mentor and public speaker. He works in the areas of creating awakened leaders, bringing consciousness to education and running regular spiritual talks and retreats. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.